Following in footsteps of a queen at Bess Fest

Elizabethan Festival, costumes, town crier etc procession leaves from the Globe from 11am then go through town centre 'MHLC-28-05-16 NNL-160528-201322009

Published:12:45Tuesday 31 May 2016

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Warwick followed in the footsteps of Queen Elizabeth I as the town celebrated the royal and her historical links with the district.

The town’s first Good Queen Bess Fest was held as part of St Mary’s church’s ongoing Shakespeare 400 celebration of religion and the playwright 400 years after his death.

Elizabethan Festival, costumes, town crier etc procession leaves from the Globe from 11am then go through town centre 'MHLC-28-05-16 NNL-160528-201335009

A procession by the Queen and her entourage in full period costume took visitors to the Lord Leycester Hospital and continued on to Kenilworth Castle and Charlecote Park - following along the path taken by the royal in her three-week-long visit in 1575.

Event organiser, Alycia Smith-Howard, said: “We are very excited about all of our events and this is one we have worked hard with to draw on the links right across Warwickshire.”

The queen came to stay at Kenilworth Castle and its 16th century owner Robert Dudley, in what turned into weeks of pageants, music, dancing, feasting and fireworks.

It is even rumoured that an 11-year-old William Shakespeare was at the festivities which inspired him to write A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Elizabethan Festival, costumes, town crier etc procession leaves from the Globe from 11am then go through town centre 'MHLC-28-05-16 NNL-160528-201432009

Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, has his tomb in St Mary’s Beauchamp Chapel - strengthening the district-wide links.

Elizabethan Festival, costumes, town crier etc procession leaves from the Globe from 11am then go through town centre 'MHLC-28-05-16 NNL-160528-201455009